


When Love Is Gone, Where Does It Go?

by Bojangles25



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Afterlife, Dark then happy, F/F, Soulmates, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-14 22:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3428000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bojangles25/pseuds/Bojangles25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is a thief, stealing those you love. Death is a trickster. Death strands you in a never-ending wasteland. Death is eternity. Eternity need not be a curse. Because when love is lost, it must go somewhere. An expansion of my story "Just Wait Until It's Over," because it was totally unsatisfying and I thought I had a good idea on how to continue with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We stood beside a frozen sea. I saw you out in front of me. Reflected light, a hollow moon. Oh Korra(Asami); it's over too soon. Asami makes a deal with a spirit for her wife's life.

Mud squelched beneath struggling steps on the riverside, dark and thick as blood in the red clay. Red as the slashes of color in Asami's coat. Korra followed it like a beacon, shimmering like a foolish dream in and out of sight as fog rolled off the water in unfriendly clouds.

The crimson beacon stopped and shivered. "Asami, I'm still here," Korra called out. "Keep walking. Just keep looking ahead. I'm right behind you."

Slim shoulders slumped, and black boots continued their path. The river flowed beside them seemingly endlessly. Sometimes Asami would fade from sight. Those were the moments where Korra worried most. Then her coat and boots came back into view, and Asami's back was still turned, and she still marched ahead, her neck straining to make her eyes do the same.

Just wait, Korra pleaded. Not much longer now. She could not say what part of the Spirit World she was in. Or if she was in the Spirit World at all. Sometimes she looked down and her hands were wrinkled and spotted, an old woman's hands. Sometimes they were stubby and pudgy, with tiny legs to match. Her body glowed transparent, a specter's skin. A grim reminder. Motivation to trudge ahead at all costs.

She heard Asami's voice ahead, feathering through the mists like a beautiful song in an unknown language. Korra need not hear the words to know her wife pleaded. Asami had pleaded every step of the way. A sweet melody that both pillowed and scratched at the Avatar's ears. The pain was worth it. Korra had missed Asami's voice, and if pleading was how she had to hear it, pleading would have to do.

Sometimes Asami would stop, and Korra would have to shout. Her voice was deaf to her own ears, but Asami seemed to hear, her hair whipping when her head tilted, and would keep walking, somehow resisting the urge to turn around to catch that long denied glimpse of her wife. Impossibly strong as always. She'd always been the stronger of them.

Even Korra's death did not steal her strength. Korra could not say she would be so determined in her wife's place.

How long had it been now? She tried to remember Asami as she had been the day Korra left home for the last time. The stress lines her stint as President had cut mercilessly into her forehead and temples. The way the gray streaks through her hair had somehow further dignified her, had made her seem even more powerful, intelligent, and beautiful. The occasional tremble of her hands that decades of precise movements had inflicted upon them, and the curses escaping her lips, spoken like a ward against an evil spell.

How much older was she now? It was hard to tell through the mist and clouded eyes. How long had they followed this river, marching in a ghostly procession, so close yet too far away from each other?

A thick cloud of fog enveloped them, and Korra could hardly see her feet beneath her as the ground grew hard, icy. "Korra?" Asami called out. "Can you still see me?"

Korra tried to call out. The fog seemed to swallow her voice and crawl down her throat, cold and stony. Her skin grew cold and she shivered. Korra had always loved the cold. Had thrived in snow and harsh winds that drove others to shelter. This was a different kind of cold. A familiar numbness attempting to freeze her body in place. Korra gritted her teeth and made her legs stride faster ahead, over the icy ground.

"Follow my voice, Korra. Just follow my voice." Asami's voice strained, hands of age and fear wrapped around her throat. "It can't be much further. Just follow me."

Korra had always followed Asami, and never regretted it. She had never been given reason to regret anything except the years stolen from them.

Dark shadows crept through the mist on spindly legs. Korra reached out, but the shadows paid her no mind. They converged on Asami, her frightened gasps mixing with determined grunts and a mocking laugh that hung in the air like a swollen cloud preparing to empty upon the world below. The shadows that dissipated were quickly replaced. They danced beyond Asami's reach, waiting their turn, taunting her.

It wasn't fair. That wasn't the deal the spirit made. All Asami was supposed to do was lead her out. There had been no mention of fog or shadows. Just don't look back, the spirit had said. Never look back at Korra.

Asami's silhouette flowed like the water beside her as she fought the shadows off. She had worked hard as she grew older to retain her limber reflexes. The woman Korra watched fought was brief moments slower than the woman she'd met decades ago, but still fast enough to fight her foes off, war cries spilling from her lips with every blow. Maybe that one shadow would not have come so close to scratching her cheek. Maybe she wouldn't have slipped in the mud. Maybe she wouldn't have winced when a hooked claw ripped through the fabric at her forearm, drawing blood.

Korra swallowed a sob, but it reached her eyes anyway, the tears hot as fire on her frigid cheeks as they leaked down her face. She wondered if she was doing the right thing. If she was only condemning herself and her wife to further tragedy. No one escaped death forever. Even if she returned now, her life would end again. Or Asami's would, leaving Korra alone. Was all this really worth it? Should she stop where she stands and let Asami continue on back to her life, back to the daughters they loved and the grandchildren they adored?

Time passes. Grief dissipates. A person finds strength and comfort in new friends, new loved ones, new pursuits. Korra did not want to hold Asami back from discovering what joys life waited to bestow upon her. They had loved each other. They still do. But as important as that love was, Asami would move on. She would find meaning to grow older and love anew, surrounded by family and friends. Korra slowed, and stopped, letting the mist swallow the world ahead.

Asami's voice reached Korra's ears, a faint whisper bordering on suggestion more than fact, half-broken with unshed sobs. The Avatar hurried her steps until her wife's back stood tall through the mist, the red and black beacon leading her once again. She had never abandoned Asami. She would not now. If this was a mistake, it was yet another mistake they would experience together.

The fog melted away, revealing a wooden bridge fording the river. Asami hurried across, puffs of dust kicking up beneath her boots with every creaking stride atop the wooden planks. Korra stopped before her first step and smiled. She smiled imagining Daiyu and Huiling's faces. She smiled thinking of her grandchildren. She smiled at long walks and long nights with a soft, familiar hand and a head pillowed on her shoulder.

Korra saw Asami's neck twitch and turn ahead of her shoulders. She tried to hurry, but it was too late. The river froze and broke through the bridge, sending a shower of splinters soaring into the sky to fall down on Korra's head and shoulders, scratching at her face. A wall of ice blocked her way, clear as a mirror. Where her reflection should have been, Asami stared back instead. Not the woman Korra had grown old with, but the young woman she'd fallen in love with. Asami's emerald eyes filled with tears and her ruby lips quivered.

"But…" she sobbed. "…you were right…how…no."

Korra smiled. "It's okay. It's not your fault."

"I didn't look back until I was gone. I thought you were with me. I'm so sorry."

"Sami, it's not your fault. I hesitated. I'm to blame."

Asami's hand pressed against the ice. Smooth, no wrinkles, the hand that held hers the day Jinora was named an airbending master, the hand that gripped excitedly as they entered the Spirit World together. Korra reached to press her palm against the soft skin once more. The ice chilled her very soul.

"There has to be some way," Asami said. " I'll find you again, we'll make this happen. I won't give up."

"Sami, it's over."

"No!"

"Sami." Korra took a deep breath. It had always been too good to be true. And unfair to the woman she loved. "Sami, you shouldn't spend the rest of your life clinging to the past. You have Daiyu and Huiling. You have our grandchildren. You have our friends. Don't dwell. You've never been a very good dweller."

"But I want to spend my life with you."

"And you did. But it's like Katara always told us. You can't dwell on what has already happened. It's better to focus on what will happen next."

"Korra, I love you."

"I love you, too."

The two kept their palms pressed to the ice. Korra closed her eyes, not wanting to see the sorrow flowing from Asami's beautiful emeralds. "Enough of that. Come on, now, it's been a long time since I saw our girls. Tell me about them. Please don't make me watch you cry."

Asami swallowed, breathed deep, and smiled. Asami had always been the strong one. Stronger than Korra could ever dream of being.

They stood across from each other, reflected in the ice, and reflected on their lives. They laughed over the happy years spent together. They vented frustrations and sorrows from raising their children. They cooed and squealed over their grandchildren. They talked through resentment stored deep over the years. They spoke every word they could think of and shared every joy. All the while the ice wall slowly melted, streaks of steaming tears flowing down the mirror face matching those shared by Korra and her wife. Asami promised to make the most of what time remained to her. Korra promised they would reunite. Their lips met on the weeping ice.

Asami was the first to close her eyes, a smile on her flawless face. Korra watched the ice melt past her hair, then her eyes, before she did the same. When she opened them, the river flowed again and Asami was gone.

Korra turned back the way she came with her eyes fixed to the muddy riverbank. A scrap of cloth caught her eye, half-buried and stiff in the mud. She knelt down and plucked it off the ground with a spotted, wrinkled hand. A thin streak of blood stained the fabric where the shadow had scratched across Asami's arm.

"I promise," Korra whispered, clutching it in her hands and placing one foot in front of the other.


	2. I Think I Saw What Happens Next

The hardest part was that first day after waking.

Asami Sato was a logical person. Logic applied to everything, from the cold mechanisms assembled in her factories to the ethereal transformations of the Spirit World. Confusion had a simple cure. You gathered information on your surroundings, applied what you learned to the rules you know to exist, and you figure out how the two coexist.

When she opened her eyes to discover an unfamiliar setting, she stretched her neck to the right, waiting for the uncomfortable click down her aching back that developed a decade ago. No matter how she worked the muscles, the click did not come. Neither did the pain in her shoulders when she sat up. A brisk, chilly wind ruffled her hair, but her joints did not ache.

She began logically dissecting her circumstances and reconnecting the pieces one by one. Fleeting images floated hazily at the corner of her vision. Images of unadorned white walls, white sheets, a white ceiling beckoning to her. She remembered water flowing over her skin, hot as a welder and cold as the South Pole. Hosts of fingers gripped her hands; some were long, some were short, some sweated as if in a sauna and some were dry as a desert. Asami’s eyes had drifted shut. Something wet had splashed onto the rough fabric of an unfamiliar sleeve.

Smooth, ivory flesh covered hands that did not shake and were liberated of the trembles and wrinkles of experience. Asami took a deep breath, but the air found no lungs. She was a logical person. There was a single logical conclusion. She was dead.

Asami screamed.

Hours passed. Days. When Asami realized she couldn’t tell, that there was no sun journeying across the sky or hunger growling in her stomach, that entire lifetimes may have passed in the moment she screamed, she only screamed all the louder. 

Decades, centuries passed before she stood on legs inhumanly free of grieving wobbling, of the physical weakness common to emotional pain. She took her first real look at her unstable surroundings, fluctuating like a teenage mood. Like the most violent recesses of the Spirit World run amok. The first step had always proven the most difficult in life. Waking the morning after her mother’s cruel murder. Following down her father’s path. Stepping away from that path when the trees to either side blackened with corruption. Forgiveness, friendship, family. Her company. Her wife. It was only fitting that the afterlife’s first step try her as well.

Asami wondered aimlessly through an aimless world lacking solid structure or form. Rivers flowed uphill and froze atop mountains. Ice hung steaming and dripping from barren desert cliffs, while cactus froze. Fish walked on land. Birds swam in lakes. She wandered, frightened. Asami was a woman of logic in a realm devoid of it.

She cupped a handful of icy blue and found she had no thirst to quench. She stared past the reflection in the mirroring surface, past the green eyes set in a young face she’d nearly forgotten. She focused on the shimmering blue, trying to remember why it was so familiar. Her eyes traveled across the lake to the opposite shore.

Deeper blue wrapped firmly around a specter standing beside the waters. Asami furrowed her brows and squinted. The blue of the lake reflected beside lonely sorrow in eyes of pure beauty. A name formed on her lips, like a single learned word of an ancient language forgotten long ago, its meaning lost. The specter faded into the emptiness beyond the lake. Asami blinked and continued on.

Millennia passed. Asami traversed canyons with cliffs of frozen water and rolling hills of shimmering lava that felt cool on her bare feet. She swam through the sky and walked along ocean floors. Endless days became endless nights. Winters marched cold beside steaming summers.

She could feel the atrophy within, her soul begging for sustenance she could not name or provide. A gnawing within her mind that dragged her along. A search leading her down a path with an end she could not see. Was this the afterlife? A cruel, meaningless meandering in the name of something unidentifiable? Asami tried to choose. She would stop in place, get off her feet, and refuse the next step, or any other step. Time would pass. She would stand, plucked to her feet, and take that next difficult step.

Sometimes she saw the blue eyes, a reminder of something; she always stood opposite and apart. Korra, Asami remembered, though she still struggled to decipher the importance hidden within the sounds. She would call the name, but the blue-swathed specter either could not hear or did not listen. Time passed quickly and not at all. 

After one such encounter, Korra began to leave behind mementos. Rippling rainbow leaves with colors that rippled like gentle waves. Blocks of ice cut into fantastical shapes. Roaring flames of purple and red gave off no heat but provided comfort. One time she left behind a ripped cut of blue fabric, presumably from her clothing. Asami did not hesitate to tie it around her wrist. She did not understand, either.

There was no one else. Memories withered and blew away in the wind. She had…a son? A daughter? Her eyes were…amber? Or blue, like Korra’s? She tried to remember, and only forgot more. Someone had once told her she would see them again in the afterlife. If she focused enough, she could remember hair dark as midnight and ruby lips. Was that her? But that wouldn’t make sense. She would not have promised to reunite with herself. Then she would see a mustache, and fury melted away to sorrow. 

A long day passed within a dry forest of wet coral. Asami ate crystal fruits. No hunger was sated, but she found comfort in the chewing and swallowing, a whisper of a reality she’d nearly forgotten and did not want to. Her eyes drifted shut. When they opened again, entirely aware of the passage of time, Korra stood over her.

Rough, cracked lips gaped open. Muscled arms crossed over a chest. Stray, messy strands of earthy hair hung limp over searching eyes, trying hard to solve a puzzle whose complexity had grown unruly. Eyes that peeled the flesh from Asami’s bones in search of the truth beneath. Eyes that Asami could not look away from.

She managed somehow, only to lock on a strip of color tied around Korra’s right arm. A strip of black and red gone stiff from dried blood. Korra.

Cracked lips widened into a smile. “Asami.”

Strong hands pulled Asami to her feet. She remembered that strength. That grip. Korra’s face twitched and trembled. “I promised. I promised you.” She pulled the material from around her arm and held it out. “I promised.”

Korra. Korra. Asami wrapped her arms around her wife. Her wife. A blue sky glowed above. “It was you,” she whispered. “I was looking for you.”

“You found me.”

Asami held Korra tightly. 

“You’ll never have to find me again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I didn't scare everyone off before the ending.


	3. Eternity

It was best not to think. Hard, but best. Korra felt she'd grown to become a reflective person as she'd aged. Someone who was comfortable in the silence which encouraged a person to look inward and ask important questions about themselves and their existence.

She woke easily, never truly asleep at all. Thin, deceptive arms squeezed tight around her waist, delicate fingers interlaced with her own. Asami's eyes were open and clear. She had not slept either. Remembrances of decades of shared mornings had acquainted Korra well with her wife's waking expressions. The smudges where the makeup she hadn't quite been able to remove had smeared. The unusual frown. The way her puffy, squinting eyes squeezed shut and forced themselves open.

Korra thought it best to take a mindset more fitting to her youthful body, and trudge forward with impulsively and with as little thought as she could.

"Good morning," she said, smiling. Whether it was morning, or whether mornings existed at all, was irrelevant.

"Good morning." Asami pressed her lips, warm as a soothing bath, to Korra's cheek.

They had begun every "morning" this way, and would until there was a reason not to. Once they had properly dedicated themselves to the beginning of a new "day," each grabbed their individual pack and began searching through their sketches.

Which, of course, had been Asami's idea. It was remarkable to watch as she dedicated herself to understanding this plane of existence with the same vigor with which she had tried to understand the mortal world. Dozens of maps fell crumpled out alongside her notes, scratched over with comments intending to try and connect them somehow. She'd given up on mapping long ago. Their surroundings transformed without rhyme or reason. Paths they followed for weeks, months, years would simply vanish. Oceans became lakes. Asami would grunt and mutter under her breath as she erased her hard work, or angrily scratched zigzagging lines through the paper.

Korra had been the first to notice the memories, how images of life burst open like a blooming flower, the fragrant scents of their loved ones filling in the dull colors. She'd also noticed how quickly the harsh winds would whisk those scents away and leave the two women frustratingly ignorant. When she abandoned her maps, Asami dedicated herself to those memories. Every time good fortune rewarded them with a glimpse of past mortality, she wrote it down. Eventually she insisted Korra begin doing the same.

"Anything? Asami asked.

Korra closed her eyes, and frowned hard. She heard her wife's remorseful sigh, an ugly sound. "Something. It's vague." Like a silhouette in the mist, shouting her name. "I see…dark hair." Midnight framing a round, pale moon face. "Daiyu."

Asami smiled. "How about the other?"

"No." Korra rubbed the back of her neck, working at the uncomfortable kink that formed at the peak of her spine when something important floated beyond her grasp, like mocking spirit laughing at her. Rubbing wouldn't help, but she rubbed all the harder for knowing that. "Just…white. A detached brightness."

"White." The corners of Asami's face tugged uniformly towards the earth, pulled down by the same mocking spirit which taunted Korra. She took a pen and scribbled on a nearly filled sheet of paper.

They continued this way, reviewing names, descriptions, and events. It was how they made sure they would always remember. There was no nature to memory in the afterlife. Names come naturally one moment may flee the next. Childhood became an unknown concept. Their best friends transformed to total strangers, their well-known features reduced to shadows. Korra smiled as she remembered her parents. Tears fell down Asami's perfect cheeks while she retold the story of her mother's death. Their hands locked desperately together while they took turns recalling the three years they spent apart after defeating Zaheer. New revelations were recorded. It was how they remembered. They refused to forget.

The only thing they never forgot was each other. Anytime Korra felt her mind slip, she need only look over at her wife for it to restore every moment they had spent together in life and now death. Sometimes Asami would reach for her hand, or wrap her arms around Korra's waist, and plant series of kisses trailing from temple to jaw, and joyous relief would flood her features. It was only fair. With such hard work required to remember so much, the ease of each other was deserved.

Sometimes Korra wondered if too much of her identity had been built upon a foundation of Asami. Death before her wife was obscure, unremarkable, lacking historic points to mark the journey. What little stood out were what she now understood to be glimpses of each other as they followed the winding path towards reunion. Every moment since stood out like bold color on a minimalist landscape; Korra could remember every wondrous landscape, the never-ending shifts and transformations, every word spoken and laugh that split the still air. She blushed at desperate touches and kisses hard and soft, trailing each others' bodies.

Was their dependence a mistake, iron bramble clutching at their clothing, a high wall barring the path to individual enlightenment? Korra felt the ground melt beneath her and the silence close in, pressing on every side. A hand reached through the hard-packed air, thick as glue, and grabbed hold of her arm, anchoring her back into reality. Asami smiled. Her blissful expression sparked a pure light in Korra's heart that spread to the tips of the Avatar's fingers and toes, wings of eternal happiness fluttering and lifting her soul. Wings that were a deserved reward for a soul long mired in hardship more than a single soul should have to resist.

The two women leaned into each other, miring themselves deep within the peace of their companionship.

Asami smiled and sprinted off when they came across the lake. "Come on!" she shouted back, shirt slipping off her slim shoulders. Her boots flew off, and her shirt fell to the muddy bank.

Korra followed with less haste. "You always enjoyed swimming."

"Hmm?"

"Swimming. I remember you love it. Even when you were living in your penthouse, you would go back to the estate twice a week for a swim in the pool. We would go to the beach at least once a month during the summer."

Asami smiled, looking back over her shoulder. "And the second Daiyu and Huiling turned four, I took them down to the…" She paused, mouth agape. "Huiling. I remember Huiling."

White. "Her hair. We never knew why it was white."

"Write it down," Asami said, pointing eagerly at the backpack at Korra's feet, ruby crescent stretching from ear to ear. This was how they remembered. Asami waited patiently for Korra to finish writing, trailing her hands gently over the surface of the lake, creating ripples that danced away. "Now get in her and swim with me."

"Huiling was always so infuriatingly aloof," Korra remembered, floating on her back and slapping at the water with every slow backstroke. "You tried so hard to make swimming lessons fun for her, to make her interested, and she always ended up shrugging like she couldn't possibly care less. She was that way when I trained her in airbending as well. So unlike Daiyu."

"I hear that's how first and second children are," Asami said. Her chin cut sharply through the waves, her head the only part of her body above them. "The oldest child is driven since they receive so much more of the parents' focus and attention. Then when the second child comes along they don't have quite the burden on them and are content to live in their older sibling's shadow."

Korra shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Only child, after all."

"Me, too. And we're both quite driven, I'd say."

"Very."

Korra relaxed into the waters. They seemed to mold themselves her liking, nipping at her skin with slightly chilled teeth that raised goosebumps along her skin, just the way she preferred. Asami dove beneath the waves and back. Not one sound dared disturb the tranquility of the setting; the waves lapped mutely at the shore, Korra's arms knifed soft as a blade through butter, even Asami's reemergence sprinkled back onto the lake's surface with more rumor than fact. The former Avatar did not know how long she had wandered before finding Asami. Minutes and millennia seemed to pass in equal measure, impossible to track. Day and night lasted years and sometimes cooperatively. She remembered the loneliness, though. The storm rumbling in her mind as she traversed horrible landscapes strange and wrong. The afterlife had been a cruel, undeserved punishment.

Now it seemed a dream. A fantasy she would never need to wake from. Eternity with a soul that fit the rough edges of her own perfectly.

Her tranquility ceased with a splash across her face. Korra sputtered water out of her mouth and looked over where Asami floated, grinning. "Oh, you are so going down for that."

"Give it your best shot," Asami said with a quick dart of her tongue through her lips. "I bet you won't catch me."

"Are you kidding? I grew up in the Southern Water Tribe. Swimming was a school subject."

"But did you have a pool to swim in since you've been old enough to walk?"

The two women splashed and squealed through an endless evening painting the sky the bright orange of the fruits that hung ripe from trees. The air smelled of citrus leaking through the splitting skins. Sometimes Korra caught Asami long enough to dunk her. Sometimes Asami caught Korra long enough to tickle that torturous spot along her ribcage. They would break with a kiss and begin again.

Years later, they stepped from the water. Or maybe minutes. Korra couldn't tell. The water dried on their skin as they stepped from the water. They dressed in silence. A silence of a probing nature, reached thin fingers through the ears to pry out the questions Korra feared to ask.

"What's eating you?" Asami asked.

"Nothing." Korra didn't want to talk. She didn't want to think. Hard as it was, it was best not to think.

She waited for the follow up. Asami always said confusion had a simple cure. One involving a lot of questions that did not stop until they had talked through their issues. Still, it was worth trying just on the off chance Asami didn't poke and prod until the insecurities leaked out of the pinholes.

The silence stretched until they were dressed. Then Asami turned to Korra, smiled, and asked, "Which way should we try? Do you think it matters?"

Korra shrugged. "No idea. Either the whole 'bridge between spirits and humans' thing doesn't apply to this place, or I don't get to keep it, because I've never been so clueless in my life."

Asami laughed, a fluttering note like a songbird.

As they walked, hand in hand, the questions in Korra's mind only grew stronger and it was all she could do to hold the walls against their combined siege alongside the frown fighting to control her lips. With every step she only wanted more than the previous to talk to her wife, to sound her fears and face them with Asami's assistance. A youthful body did not make forgetting the habits of a lifetime easier. Outward appearances could not bury the permanent transformations Asami had inscribed within her soul. And frankly, Korra never wanted to regress back to the girl she was before.

So screw it, she was going to give voice to her fears and hope they didn't frighten away.

"Do you ever wonder about this place?"

"No," Asami said. Calm, sure, not wanting to discuss the issue further.

Korra's eyes snapped over at her wife's. "Wait, what?"

"I don't wonder about it at all. I'd rather avoid wondering about it forever if I could."

"But, what if talking about it allowed us to understand? Then we could maybe figure out some rules. Where certain landmarks might be, how to get there, maybe even how to find other people. I haven't seen anyone besides you. You said the same about me. Don't you wonder why?" Asami smiled and chuckled. "What?"

"You sound like me."

Korra thrust out her bottom lip. "And you're acting like me."

"Yeah. It was unavoidable."

"And you're not going to talk about any of this?"

"No." Asami strolled ahead.

Weeks, months passed. They raced up a sheer mountain face, too close to call and both declaring victory. They snuck through dark caves that emptied into the sky. They relaxed beneath scorching suns that did not scorch and fought snowball fights with snow that was not cold. Most of the time, Korra was able to shove her fears down into a dark pit, where no light could reach to illuminate them. Specifics were irrelevant, and Asami was enough.

Too much of her wife had imprinted within Korra, had replaced too much of the girl she used to be with something purely Asami. Eventually Korra could not handle the avoidance any longer, the uncertainty and lack of knowledge, and she would again bring the up the issue. Asami would laugh it off. They would move on, because ultimately the how did not matter.

"Morning" came, and Korra's eyes drifted open. She had not slept. Sleep was entirely unnecessary. Snow fell soft as kisses and warm as a swampy mist. It covered the hills as soothingly as a childhood blanket. She sat up, stretched, and yawned a greeting to her wife.

Silence and hard cold met her touch. Korra looked around the fluffy wasteland and saw nothing. Asami was gone. A thousand ignored regrets and a touch of disgusting pride made Korra shiver and sweat. She called Asami's name. Still silence. A dream become nightmare.

A tree in flames stood tall. Snow melted upon approach and fell to the ground as a mournful rain. Tears fell from a porcelain face, splashing upon a dark jacket. Korra's boots crunched an announcement with every step on the frozen ground. Asami looked up and smiled. She did not try to hide the tears, and leaned against Korra's shoulder when offered.

"I'm okay, really," Asami said. "Sometimes I need to cry. It's hard."

"I know." Korra pillowed her cheek on the gentle waves of raven hills brushing her neck. The drops falling around them slid away without soaking.

There was so much they left behind. One unfortunate consequence of remembering was the pain of losing those you remembered. Korra had never met anyone else in this existence, but she imagined many accepting forgetfulness of themselves and life, if only to avoid the pain. Korra couldn't do that. Neither could Asami. So sometimes they needed to cry.

"Did you bring your pack?" Asami asked.

"Yeah."

"Can you take out the sketch? I want to add to it."

Korra watched her wife's deft hand glide over the paper, long curves and short, back and forth to fill in color, biting her lip the way she always had when she sketched ideas for her company. When her hand finally came to a stop, she grinned wide, placed the pencil down, and held it up. "I remembered everything. What do you think?"

Daiyu stared back at Korra from the sheet, a perfect facsimile. The stubborn dark locks. The small nose. The determined set of her mouth, so like Asami's. The warmth and judgmental intelligence in the eyes. All of it perfect, and devoid of the color that defined their oldest daughter. Too fitting. Korra's lips quivered while she smiled. "It's wonderful."

Asami held her while Korra took her turn to cry. Sometimes, they just needed to.

"I love them so much. I miss them. I miss so many people."

"I know." Asami's deft fingers stroked soothingly through Korra's hair. "So do I."

Korra stared at the sketch through the wet blur.

Decades, centuries passed. A great colosseum rose ahead, sharp points glinting despite the sunless haze of the sky. Korra led the way through the towering archways and up the stairs to the stands. Asami followed behind, gasping in awe at the architecture. She pointed out remarkable features, studied unknown innovations, felt along pillars and walls.

"Wait," she said, grabbing Korra's arm. "Do you hear that?"

The former Avatar strained to listen. Determined grunts of effort, the familiar song of combat, seeped through the walls. Korra ran into the stands and looked down at the marble arena below. Two tiny forms traded blows beneath. One sprouted flames from his fists and feet. The other tossed thin, earthen disks from a stack. It couldn't be.

Korra ran past Asami, grabbed her hand, and pulled her along, giggling all the while. The two women darted back down the stairs and through a second archway leading to the arena. They readied the calls on their lips.

"Already?" Asami said, frustrated.

"Already."

Bolin and Mako had already gone. There was no sign of them or the disks Bolin had tossed. Chunks of stone fell from the stands.

"That was them, right?" Korra asked, still smiling.

"It was." Asami nestled against her wife. "It's okay. We'll find them."

"We won't have to." Searching was unnecessary. When the time was right, their paths would cross. Just like her and Asami. They would find all their friends and family when the time was right. Mom and Dad. Asami's parents. Tenzin. Pema. Katara. Korra smiled.

"I guess not," Asami said. "When it's time, we'll find each other."

Of course Asami understood. She always understood. Korra took her wife's hand, and they walked back the way they came, smiling all the while. No matter what came, they would have each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was satisfying. I really liked the idea of exploring the afterlife with these two, the idea of loved ones finding each other, and imagining my own idea of afterlife in the Avatarverse. We never really hear anything about it. And of course how death would affect a person's memories of what came before. Asami would totally be the kind of person to record everything she could and make sure she never forgot. 
> 
> As to where they got paper and pen/pencil from, it's the afterlife. Stuff happens.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it's sad, but it gets happier.


End file.
